


Who We Are Now

by Abbie



Series: The AU AU [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Gen, Team Dynamics, Tension, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbie/pseuds/Abbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver resists continuing under the Hood with the wrong Felicity Smoak, only she isn't willing to let him give everything up without a fight. Neither, surprisingly, is Tommy.</p><p>—</p><p>“You’re not her!” Oliver spat, turning and slamming his new bow down on the med bench. He missed Felicity’s flinch at the noise. “She is dead because you’re here. The Hood is hung up, and it’s staying there.” He glanced at Diggle, then turned furiously burning eyes back to her, gesturing sharply. “This isn’t a team. We were. But you. Aren’t. Her.”</p><p>Tommy sucked in a breath behind her, but Felicity shook her head and stepped towards Oliver, chin held high. “No. No, I’m not her. But I was her. And believe me when I say she wouldn’t want you to just give up!”</p><p>Oliver flinched, dropping his eyes and then looking sharply at Tommy. His face locked down cold, and he shook his head shortly. “No. I’m done trying to wash these streets clean with blood.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who We Are Now

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted on Tumblr by sickandtwisteddoc, "confrontation"

“You’re not her!” Oliver spat, turning and slamming his new bow down on the med bench. He missed Felicity’s flinch at the noise. “She is dead because  _you’re_ here. The Hood is hung up, and it’s staying there.” He glanced at Diggle, then turned furiously burning eyes back to her, gesturing sharply. “This isn’t a team.  _We_  were. But you. Aren’t.  _Her_.”

Tommy sucked in a breath behind her, but Felicity shook her head and stepped towards Oliver, chin held high. “No. No, I’m not her. But I  _was_  her. And believe me when I say she wouldn’t want you to just give up!”

Oliver flinched, dropping his eyes and then looking sharply at Tommy. His face locked down cold, and he shook his head shortly. “No. I’m done trying to wash these streets clean with blood.”

Behind him, leaning against the computer station with his arms folded, Diggle compressed his lips and sighed, but nodded when Oliver looked at him.

“That’s bullshit.” Tommy stepped forward, tall and straight at Felicity’s shoulder, frowning. “You  _killed people_  for this shit, Oliver, and you’re gonna tell me now that my father’s put down, you’re done? That’s good enough?”

He scoffed, but Oliver looked almost betrayed, expression incredulous, brows screwing up and eyes narrowed. “You’re on her side about this? I thought you would be ecstatic I was done  _murdering_  people!”

Tommy’s nostrils flared, jaw clenching. “I wasn’t exactly a fan of the jolly green longjohns, sure, and I wouldn’t say I’ve converted to the fanclub, but Ollie! Look at the fucking news!” He flung a hand towards the stairs. “Hell, look outside! People are losing their minds, there’s rioting and looting, crime in the Glades is up so damn high we can’t even reopen the club, and meanwhile our fellow one percenters are treating this as a  _profit_  opportunity!” He shook his head sharply. “Neither of us may like it, but the Hood’s a symbol now and the longer you let people do shit in your name the less control you have over what that name means—and the more shit people are gonna do under the banner. You’ve already got punk kids running around in green hoodies, what happens when a real copycat steps up?”

Felicity, who had been staring with soft, thoughtful surprise at Tommy, turned again to meet Oliver’s tense stare. “They will, by the way. In  _my_  summer of ‘13, they were grown men with military training and submachine guns, and they killed the mayor.” She pressed her lips together, thinking of Thea. Unsure if she should scare him that way. “Among other things. Somewhere out there at least one of those men is still gonna buy a hood and a Kevlar vest and think reinterpreting  _you_  is a good idea.”

Shuffling his feet liked a cornered animal, Oliver tossed a hand at her, teeth bared. “What does it matter, then! If I hang up the Hood or not, apparently these guys are still gonna do whatever it is they did when—where you’re from.”

Felicity’s eyebrows jumped, head snapping back like he’d struck her. And then she scowled, and stepped forward, one pointed finger jabbing. “No! It matters, Oliver! They did this  _where I’m from_  because you weren’t  _here_!”

He narrowed his eyes in that all too familiar look of irritated disbelief, but Felicity was  _tired_  of the skepticism, tired of the suspicion and the resentment and fighting tooth and nail with him to keep everything from unravelling even after all she’d changed.

Chin jutting, she took another hard step towards him, even as he drew up his full height in a refusal to retreat. “You  _left_! That’s what happened when I lived, and Tommy died, and we lost half the Glades. You cut me and Digg a—a  _severance_ check and you left us! You left your sister, and your mom in jail, and your whole city falling apart, and you ran away to Lian Yu!” She spat the island’s name and it seemed to hit him like a bullet—or an arrowhead—his eyes widening and mouth falling open. And then he looked away, brows twisted up in confusion. “And you weren’t even going to come  _back_. You left us, Oliver, and everything fell apart!”

She glanced at Digg, who was watching solemnly, attentively. “The whole world went to hell and John would have let you stew in your pain, because you were grieving and you thought Tommy—” she shook her head, cutting off and glancing back at Tommy, who was pale and thin-lipped. She wasn’t sure it was hers to share that Oliver had believed Tommy died thinking his best friend was a murderer. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just let you quit, not when we—when your family and your city still  _needed_  you.”

Oliver lifted his chin and stared her down, jaw-squared and expression closed-off. But his eyes no longer seemed as shuttered, even as his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Felicity’s lips trembled, and she bit down hard on the bottom to stifle the betrayal. “I’ve seen what happens when you hang up the Hood, Oliver. These were five months where  _nothing_  good happened.” He inhaled sharply, brows twitching together, and she flushed, hurrying to continue, “Riots and looting and the police abandoning the Glades, blood in the water at Queen Consolidated, and the streets flooding with guns and drugs. And no Hood around to stop it, or to help anyone.”

Oliver held her eyes when she fell quiet, now so close she had to tip her head back to look at him.

Diggle cleared his throat, unfolding his arms and stepping forward as Oliver turned to look at him. “I’m not gonna tell you what you gotta do, Oliver. You had a mission, you stopped the Undertaking. It’s done. You actually won this one. All the hell you’ve been through, nobody’d blame you if you wanted to just figure out how to be  _home_  again.” Digg drew even with them, just a few feet away, and set his hands on his hips. “But can you? Do you really think you even  _can_  lay down the bow for good? Or is it just a matter of time until something else happens where you can see it, or hear about it, and you step up because nobody else can? Or will.”

Oliver worked his jaw as he held John’s gaze, thumb and forefinger chafing. Felicity took a small step back, and Oliver swept his gaze to her, to Tommy, back to Digg. “It was supposed to be over. I wasn’t—I didn’t expect there to  _be_ an after.” Tommy sucked in a sharp, loud breath behind Felicity, and Oliver looked up at him under his brows, expression miserable. “And then I thought…” He sighed, looked away and pushed his hands over his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. I was wrong. But I can’t… I can’t keep on being what I was, doing what I was.” He shook his head, looked at Digg. “The Hood is a killer. Starling doesn’t need a killer for a symbol.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Tommy agreed softly, stepping rapidly forward. He jerked his chin up high when Oliver looked at him again. Lips pressed thin, jaw set, his eyes burned fierce and steady. “So find another way.”

Felicity turned her head sharply to stare at him, eyes wide and lips parted.

Oliver swallowed hard, staring back at Tommy. “You think I can?”

Tommy sighed through his nose. “I think you have to. That island, Oliver, it… it changed you. Made you somebody with a mission, who could—who could do all of this. You believed in that. I  _have_  to believe you believed in it, because you spilled a lot of blood to see this through.” Oliver’s eyes glittered with tears—with guilt, shame—and Tommy looked at the floor, biting his lip. And then he took a deep breath and looked back up. “That damned island changed you too much for you to go back, and you know it.”

Oliver’s eyes slid shut as he let out a long breath, turning away and scrubbing a hand over his hair before bracing his weight against the weapons table.

“So don’t go back,” Tommy spoke softly, his tone laced with regret, reluctance. “You can’t be—you can’t be that guy anymore. You can’t stop knowing what you know, or undo what you’ve done. For better or worse, this is what you are now. But if you don’t wanna be the guy who murders everybody who stands in his way anymore, either—” Oliver’s shoulders bunched up in tension, his head dropping forward, “—then find. Another. Way.”

Felicity stared at Oliver’s back in silence, breath held and lower lip caught between her teeth. Without thinking, she reached out and took Tommy’s hand. He gripped it tightly in return.

There was a long, taut beat of quiet, and then Oliver loosed a shuddering sigh. “If I do this. If… if  _we_  do this,” he lifted his head, looked at Digg, who closed the distance to the end of the table and nodded. Oliver straightened and turned a little towards Tommy and Felicity. He looked up, around the room, and his gaze settled on the computer station. Dropped to the floor a few feet in front of it.

The concrete there was still faintly stained brown.

Oliver stared at the spot in muted anguish. “I can’t do it here.”

Felicity gasped—Oliver flinched at the sound—and banded an arm over her stomach. She tried to pull her hand from Tommy’s, but he only held on tighter. “Right,” Felicity choked. “Of course not.”

Oliver refused to turn his head and look at her. Diggle, however, watched her inscrutably.

“Your secondary bolthole,” Felicity rasped shakily, chest burning with guilt, hurt, sorrow. “We could move there.”

Diggle’s eyebrows leapt high and Oliver’s head snapped towards her, jaw set mulishly. “Right,” he bit out harshly. “The secondary location. Which you apparently know about.”

Felicity’s cheeks flamed, and she jerked her hand free of Tommy’s to wrap it tightly over her waist with the other, even as she refused to look away from Oliver’s accusing stare.

Tommy cleared his throat forcefully. “So you’ve got a backup. Okay. That means you’re in? You’re doing this?” He glanced at Felicity and smiled wryly. “The band’s back together?”

Oliver wrenched his jaw to one side and broke his glare from Felicity, chest expanding with a lungful of air. Instead of answering Tommy he took a step away from the table, towards the weapons racks. “If we’re doing this, I can’t be the Hood anymore. I can’t be  _called_  the Hood anymore.”

Digg straightened and folded his arms over his chest, nodding contemplatively. “Names carry weight. That one’s got a lot of baggage.”

This was it. Butterflies erupted in Felicity’s stomach, fluttered through her ribcage and into her chest. Inhaling quietly, she lifted her chin higher, and kept her expression carefully, so carefully neutral as she looked at Oliver and only Oliver. “Then what do you want to be called?”

Oliver looked at her, but the heat in his gaze had banked. He glanced to Diggle, and then lingered a moment on Tommy. Something seemed to pass silently between them, and tension leaked slowly out of Tommy’s spine. Oliver’s eyes dropped shut a moment.

When he opened them again, he turned to the weapons rack and raised his hand.

He lifted an arrow.


End file.
